2. Is the Common Core already being implemented?

Forty-five states, four territories, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Education Activity adopted the Common Core State Standards after their release on June 2, 2010. Minnesota adopted only the English language arts standards.1 All 45 states adopting both sets of standards became members of one or both of the consortia developing standardized assessments. These states committed to fully implement the standards and replace their state assessments with whatever tests the consortia produce.2 However, since the initial adoption of the standards, consortia membership in PARCC and Smarter Balanced has dropped to only 36 states collectively. Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia have refused to adopt the Common Core altogether. Despite the states’ rapid adoption of the Common Core, implementing the standards in public schools has been gradual. A study conducted by two education policy firms found that in 2011, just seven of the 45 states that had adopted the Common Core had fully developed plans for implementing the standards. In 2012, only 14 more states had produced complete plans.3

Even though some states have not adopted the Common Core and many have been slow to implement its provisions, the Common Core is already impacting students across the country. The Common Core was consulted as a curriculum authority in the formulation of the National Sexuality Education Standards.4 In the name of the Common Core’s sophisticated writing expectations, a high school teacher in New York tasked her students with persuading her in five paragraphs or less that Jews are evil and that she should be loyal to the Third Reich.5

As the possibility of widespread impact becomes increasingly apparent and the pedagogical weakness of the standards is exposed, states that originally adopted the standards are scrambling to delay or defund implementation. It is also becoming clear that the predicted cost of implementing the Common Core is much higher than the amount of money the Department of Education used to persuade states to accept de facto national standards and assessments.6

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah have withdrawn from the state consortia developing assessments aligned to the Common Core standards.7

3 Education First and Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, A National Perspective on States’ Progress in Common Core State Standards Implementation Planning (2013), 6, http://www.edweek.org/media/movingforward_ef_epe_020413.pdf. Three key areas of implementation were considered in this study: teacher professional development, curriculum guides or instructional material, and teacher-evaluation system.